09-09, 13:00–13:20 (Asia/Jerusalem), Hall 7
Language: עברית
I tried to build a WhatsApp agent to find my friends’ buried recommendations and tips - and failed spectacularly. But I learned more than I expected. This talk shares the journey, the tools, and why side projects are the best way to grow.
I was frustrated. All I wanted was to find my friends’ trusted recommendation for where to travel with the kids next weekend – buried somewhere in months of casual chatter in our local WhatsApp group. Google didn’t help, ChatGPT didn’t know, and re-asking the group felt silly. I needed something smarter – an agent that could surface what my people had already shared, no matter when or how casually they’d mentioned it.
That simple desire turned into a late-night obsession – a personal Python project that blended everything I knew about data science with the messy, unfamiliar world I was eager to explore: backend logic, interfaces, system design and bending tools until they (mostly) did what I needed. Because let’s face it, it’s never just about embeddings and clever semantic search algorithms, right? In trying to build the perfect WhatsApp agent, I discovered something even more valuable: how passion projects can surprise us, stretch us, and quietly reshape what we think we’re capable of.
In this talk, I’ll share my personal project journey – what I built, what broke, what it taught me, and why sometimes failure is the best teacher. You’ll leave with practical tools and fresh inspiration to start your own side project, the one born from your everyday frustration and can solve a real problem you care about.
Intermediate
Target audience –Developers, Data Scientists, DevOps, Integrators
Shirli is a senior AI scientist at Intuit, where she brings cutting-edge innovation to life through generative models and agentic AI. Her areas of expertise span reinforcement learning, LLM training and evaluation, NLP, classical machine learning, and the design of intelligent agents.
Shirli holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Technion, specializing in Reinforcement Learning, and a B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from Ben Gurion University.